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Midwest Earthquake

I was awakened out of a deep sleep around 5:30 this morning by a rather loud booming sound that shook the walls of my bedroom. Stuff was falling off my dresser and I sat straight up in bed, wondering what the hell was going on.

My first thought was tornado - and I jumped out of bed, pulled on some shorts and rushed to the front door to look outside, but the night skies were clear and stars were shining. There was a train going by on the track in the distance, but trains on that line have never shook the house like this. It had to be an earthquake.

So I flipped on the TV and sure enough the local news anchors started reporting calls about the quake and said that the studio was hit too.

According to CNN, an earthquake measuring 5.2 magnitude hit the Midwest. The epicenter was in southern Illinois near the Indiana border.

I'm sure SoCal forumites will probably pooh-pooh us Midwesterners, but earthquake tremors aren't a part of daily life here. So did anyone else feel it?

I'm sure SoCal forumites will probably pooh-pooh us Midwesterners, but earthquake tremors aren't a part of daily life here.

Here's one SoCal-er who won't. Those bad boys are an awesome, scary experience! I've been through some nasty ones, including the Sylmar quake, where our house sustained some pretty good damage. We're just "lucky" to have them often that we tend to get complacent if they're "small". But 5.2 ain't small! That will certainly get your attention. I'm just glad you're OK, and no worse for the wear having gone through it!

So that's what that was, I've never been through an earthquake before, so I thought it was just a super strong wind gust rocking my building. I felt the 10:15 aftershock for sure, I also thought it might be a tornado.

"To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence… When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." - C.S. Lewis

frickin frackin exciting isn't it? i was all hyped up like a goofball on speed when the quake hit us here in the uk. it was so surreal. you watch footage slowed down to show the way a quake shakes buildings but until you experience that movement and see the walls moving for yourself it just doesn't register that things like that happen for real. and the noise too. that's what i didn't expect. like a big passenger plane going overhead really low. but not like that at all when you think about it after, it's more like a sustained echo of something very very big fallen a long way down into an underground cavern. a huge bass boom. and it seems to be all around rather than coming from any one direction.

I have to say I loved our quake. I want more. which is sad i know but it takes a lot to get me excited and danger is something that does. makes me feel alive.

Nope. Didn't feel it. I'm all the way out here in Kansas though, so that's a bit farther away. They say this area is on a biiiig fault line, but we havn't had an earth quake here . . . ever. Or at least, none that anyone alive remembers.

I know this sounds crazy to people in california who have been through them, but I'd love to be in one just once to see what it's like.

Course, people not from tornado ally say the same thing about tornados. And they probably get the same reaction I will for saying this, which is,

frickin frackin exciting isn't it? i was all hyped up like a goofball on speed when the quake hit us here in the uk. it was so surreal. you watch footage slowed down to show the way a quake shakes buildings but until you experience that movement and see the walls moving for yourself it just doesn't register that things like that happen for real. and the noise too. that's what i didn't expect. like a big passenger plane going overhead really low. but not like that at all when you think about it after, it's more like a sustained echo of something very very big fallen a long way down into an underground cavern. a huge bass boom. and it seems to be all around rather than coming from any one direction.

I have to say I loved our quake. I want more. which is sad i know but it takes a lot to get me excited and danger is something that does. makes me feel alive.

It was pretty exciting and you described it pretty well. Like a thunderclap at it's most intense, but it doesn't die down after just a second or two, it keeps on going. Very cool, I almost can't wait for the next one, as long as it's not on the same level as the New Madrid quake from 1812.

"To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence… When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." - C.S. Lewis

I live in Arlington Heights, IL and did not feel a thing. I'm about 20 min from O'Hare and 35 min. from the Loop. So I guess it didn't hit my area. Just glad to hear your alright!

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I sure noticed it and I live about 30 to 40 minutes east of Cincinnati. I was actually on here doing my daily mod rounds when it struck. From here there wasn't really any noticible damage or extreme shaking (as most of you nearer to Illinois might have experienced), but you could definately hear it and see a few things (like the PC monitor) lightly vibrating. The thing I noticed the most was the windows and doors rattling (sounded like multiple people were trying to break in at every possible entrance/exit in the house). At the time that it hit the first thing that popped into my mind was earthquake, so I immediately went to the TV to confirm my suspicions. Unfortunately the Cincinnati news stations didn't start reporting anything about an earthquake until some 10 to 15 minutes later when their stations were being flooded with calls.